Almost Done! // "Finish Your Game" Jam Submission

When I saw the "Finish Your Game Jam," I decided to participate by reviving an old project  of mine: Descent! I started working on Descent almost two years ago, when I found myself wanting a short narrative RPG framework that could focus on a story about a hero making a journey to an underworld. I wanted a game that eschewed typical combat and skill-based rolls, so that it could focus solely on the relationship between a reckless, aspiring hero and a wise, hermitic guide. It's the perfect scenario for a two-player RPG, and I couldn't resist getting started.

However, life circumstances brought the project to a complete halt a few months after I got started. Aside from external events, I also got lost in making more and more work for myself. I had too many ideas for character creations choices, too many ideas for scenes, and too much advice to give to players. The game lost its focus on the tension between the two characters, and  I lost my focus on what mattered. I gave up, leaving a half-written game book in my Google Drive.

Now, though, I've found a way to finally complete what I started. It began with a simple choice: cutting the excessive options provided to players made the game significantly more focused, and it significantly eased learning the game. Before, the glut of choices meant that character creation took far too long, which was senseless for what was meant to be a short RPG or an alternative system to tell a side-story in a larger TTRPG campaign. That helped quite a bit, but the thing that really brought this closer to completion is my re-framing of how the scenes, which are GM-less, are framed. Whereas the game was fairly free-form before, it is now structured around players taking turns challenging each other to overcome set scene concepts. The "challenging" player is then asked to judge both their partner's efforts AND their reactions to their partner's efforts, making every scene collaborative and engaging. 

What guarantees that structure works, in my opinion, is that balance of judging yourself and your play partner.  This isn't a game about saying someone isn't good enough-- it's a game where heroes are looking at each other, and asking if they are following their duties to the world, to each other, and to themselves. The endgame is determined by the heroes' answers to these questions, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

As such, I'm submitting this devlog to the "Finish Your Game" Jam! I'm not quite done, but I'm hoping to release the game officially on 11/25/2020. It'll be free, since I want to give people something to play with a friend over the coming holidays.